


History Doesn't Pick Favourites

by DestielsDestiny



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Drunk Charles, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kurt Marko's A+ Parenting, Logan Needs A Hug, Long Conversations are long, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Missing Scene, Poor Charles, Snuggles at the end of the world, Swearing, Time Travel, X-Men: Days of Future Past References, logan is so done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 19:16:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7281325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan feels the hand running along his side slide significantly lower, a groan pulling from his lips as those blue eyes finally wander far enough to lock with Logan’s gaze. “That’s a really groovy mutation you have there Logan.” </p><p>Logan is actually surprised that the headboard doesn’t crack considering how hard he thumps his head against it at the sheer absurdity that is Charles Francis Xavier high on who knows what drug of the week Hank invented that both suppresses telepathy and cures paralysis. Which is far from the most brilliant thing Logan’s ever seen the Furball invent. </p><p>Except, he still had an entirely bone skeleton in 1973. Right. Not the weirdest thing indeed. </p><p>There are many things about being stuck in the 1970s which should be the weirdest thing about that rather bizarre scenario. Falling in love with a mostly dope addicted, rather hairy professor X shouldn’t have been one of them. </p><p>Except when it really was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	History Doesn't Pick Favourites

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [XavierineFest2016](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/XavierineFest2016) collection. 



> Written in response to the following prompt for the Xavierine 2016 Challenge:  
>  **Prompt:**
> 
> Old!Charles or young!Charles?
> 
> Past or present?
> 
> Logan couldn't decide.
> 
> This turned out angstier than expected. All mistakes are mine.  
> Also, if anyone can think of a time when Logan called the Professor Charles in the original movie timeline, let me know, cause I'm kinda basing this on the idea he never does??

“I don’t want to go back.” Logan barely recognizes his own voice anymore, missing the decades of smokiness that Hank always swore his healing factor should have long since made him immune to, perpetual cigar habit or not. 

A thump sounds abruptly, bouncing through the blissfully water free mattress he’s currently sharing with the hairiest guy in the entire Xavier Mansion. And that right there, more than the rather languid hand flopping down Logan’s overly sensitive flank should be a signal for how ff-ed up this entire situation is. 

Should be, except-blurry blue eyes focus tiredly somewhere south of Logan’s bearded chin, pupils blown wider than his mind is from the rather fantastic sex he just had with Charles Xavier of all people. “Logan, do you realize you have mutton chops?” The britishness seems to literally grip off that rather slurred statement, which Logan spends the entirety of trying very hard to not think about what else might be dripping off things at that moment. 

Logan feels the hand running along his side slide significantly lower, a groan pulling from his lips as those blue eyes finally wander far enough to lock with Logan’s gaze. “That’s a really groovy mutation you have there Logan.” 

Logan is actually surprised that the headboard doesn’t crack considering how hard he thumps his head against it at the sheer absurdity that is Charles Francis Xavier high on who knows what drug of the week Hank invented that both suppresses telepathy and cures paralysis. Which is far from the most brilliant thing Logan’s ever seen the furball invent. 

Except, he still had an entirely bone skeleton in 1973. Right. Not the weirdest thing indeed. 

There are many things about being stuck in the 1970s which should be the weirdest thing about that rather bizarre scenario. Falling in love with a mostly dope addicted, rather hairy professor X shouldn’t have been one of them. 

Except when it really was. 

00

“Did I ever tell you about Kurt?” Logan decidedly doesn’t start from his careless sprawl. Sprawling is one luxury of the 70s he’s never going to get tired of, largely because he doesn’t have clear memories of ever doing it since his first time through this acid and wide-pant ridden decade. Stryker and the Prof had very few things in common, but a mutual dislike for sprawling employees was definitely one of them. 

Considering younger version of said Prof, and the aforementioned sprawling disturber is currently leaning half off his own study doorway, mostly empty bottle of rather expensive smelling whiskey hanging loosely out of one hand, Logan doubts whatever it causing the familiar frown to etch its way between Charles’ eyebrows, virtually the only recognizable feature the two versions of Xavier he’s met seem to share, has anything whatsoever to do with his position on the furniture. 

“Does it count as changing history if I told you the you from my time doesn’t drink that bottle of your father’s until the turn of the millennium?” Impressively, Charles only dignifies that with one slow blink before elegantly swigging the bottle’s dregs into his mouth, sauntering into the room with a distinctive sway. His legs hit Logan’s outstretched ones in a sprawl of their own roughly the same instant the bottle makes contact with a particularly vile vase of Sharon’s over the mantle. Logan watches the pieces hit the floor in an artful shower of blue tinged flower petals, wondering if there was enough sway in that last step to attribute to more than just intoxication.

The heavy thump of ankles against ankles seems to suggest otherwise. 

Logan levels his gaze at Charles’ insouciant smile. And he’d bet all the memories he’s lost more than once over the years that he didn’t even know those kind of words before he met the man in front of him. “I assume we’re not talking about your nephew here?” Two can play this game, and Logan might now remember who taught him poker, either time, but Erik was the best chess player in the world last time he checked, and they’d had decades to practice. 

Charles’ face goes blank right around the time that Logan remembers that Erik always fought dirty. And that Charles only had one sibling that could ever be relevant to this conversation. 

Still, the memory of a scrap of Kurt’s tail clutched between shaking fingers that had somehow never looked old before that moment for all their years on the earth, Mystique’s bleeding yellow eyes narrowing in a final, twisted smirk as the air left her lungs for good an instant after she finally bothered to even tell her brother he’d known his own nephew longer than said nephew’s mother ever deigned to stick around is more than enough to prevent Logan from feeling even a twinge of regret. Or remorse. 

He came back to this shit show of a decade to save the Professor, Erik, Hank, Rogue, Bobby, Storm, everyone and everything. To save the world. To save Kurt even. But not for her. And Logan’s okay with that because the Professor was okay with that. 

He doesn’t let himself spare a thought for what Charles might think of that, here and now, the name Raven practically bouncing off the old, hard panelled walls. Charles, who’s apparently found the time to shift his legs significantly higher than Logan’s ankles, a scotch bottle somehow replacing the whiskey out of nowhere. Logan feels his own lips moving before he can take the words back. “You shouldn’t mix alcohol like that you know. It’s really bad for your health.” 

Charles actually chokes. Logan kind of agrees with the sentiment. “Jesus man, when did you get that old?” Spoken like a truly drunk Bobby Drake, circa 2002. Logan feels more than a little justified in his statement by that mental comparison. Also, he never realized how many mental sparing points could be lost with the world’s greatest telepath when said telepath’s telepathy wasn’t working. 

The scotch sloshes loudly, ripping the last shreds of Logan’s self control from it’s tenuous hold on patience is not my strongest suit. 

Bone claws are not nearly as elegant as metal ones, and wasn’t that an interesting argument back in good old 2017 which surprisingly involved a lot more protests from Magneto that he ever expected but than there’s reasons the man became Erik after that, but they were still plenty capable of slicing through fifty-year-old glass. 

The scotch hits the carpet in time with Charles’ feet which Logan shoves unceremoniously to the floor just before they reach the crotch of his jeans. His claws are still out as he whirls around to point at Charles, who’s expression is disappointingly similar to the Drake’s cat’s reaction to this particular pointing maneuver. Fortunately for all involved, Charles is far too far away to even consider licking the scotch off Logan’s claws. 

The slight flicker of something behind the other man’s eyes as Logan fails utterly to suppress a wince as he sheaths said claws to prevent any potential temptation, scotch burning delicately with glass as it pops through muscle and sinew, is almost enough to stop Logan’s verbal diatribe on his tongue, because for a moment he knew those eyes. 

Almost. Then the smirk is back. Along with the sloshing. 

That’s it. 

“Look bub, just because you found the key to daddy’s liquor stash and decided to get smashed as well as high doesn’t mean I’m gonna conveniently up and disappear. The last 24 hours did happen, I am still here and still as large as life, the world is still going to end in a couple decades if we don’t stop little miss blue from painting the walls with Trask’s fucking brains, and yes, apparently Raven was just pissed off at you enough to name her blue skinned, tail sprouting mutant son after your racist, bigot of an abusive fucking step-father!” It’s cruel. Logan knows that before it leaves his mouth. It might be one of the cruelest things he’s ever said. 

Logan doesn’t remember much of his life before the war. His memories are too scrambled these days to remember which war, but he remembers enough to know it doesn’t really matter. Pretty much the only thing he does remember with concrete certainty the Professor. And Stryker. 

And there’s no way that this is ending where he doesn’t lose them both. He hasn’t allowed himself to think about whether he regrets both of those losses. He knows which one will finally kill him though. 

He doesn’t need to lose another Charles, not here, in this ridiculous decade where Magneto’s in prison for crimes he actually didn’t commit and the Professor has hair and Logan’s head is so empty he’s half afraid the thoughts might rattle right out from sheer loneliness. 

And just like that, Logan is just done. 

Logan is halfway to the door before Charles’ voice breaks the shattered silence echoing off the walls. “He wasn’t abusive.” Logan feels an incredulous laugh fight to fall from his lips, a sneer winning out as he whipped around to regard Charles’ sweat streaked face, refusing to entertain whether the moisture on those ginger stubbled cheeks was from anything other than perspiration and alcohol. 

“The first time you got exhausted enough to slip and share your nightmares with anyone but Erik, I screamed loud enough to wake up the entire fucking block. Nearly got half of St. Louis flattened by a Sentinel.” Logan can feel his muscles loosening with every bulleted word, adrenaline kicking up, claws sliding out with a rough slither that somehow still feels wrong after two centuries he can almost remember on a good day. 

He swivels fully towards Charles, letting his bulk intimidate in a way he hasn’t ever done inside these walls, in any time or place. It doesn’t feel nearly as wrong as it should. 

“It took you nearly three hours to calm me down.”

It shouldn’t matter. After everything that’s come before, that simple, innocuous sentence shouldn’t be the one that makes the other man flinch, twitch into an even smaller slump of himself. Logan carefully doesn’t let himself think about why this is all so familiar, wood instead of metal but still, until he remembers that it doesn’t matter if he thinks about it because he can’t hear him- Logan lets the break filter into his voice, sees the tears enter Charles’ eyes, lets the viciousness sink into his bones. 

“And you know what the first thing you said to me was, after Erik finally got me pinned down enough for you to unfreeze that whole block? “He wasn’t abusive.” You even said it the same fucking way, like that somehow justified the fucker’s existence, somehow meant it didn’t matter.” 

Charles’ face has somehow gotten paler. Logan tries not to think of what it reminds him of. “Logan, you’ve said yourself that was a different man-,” That gets him an actual slash through the air, bone cutting through oxygen with a dissatisfying puff. 

This hadn’t been on the list of reasons in favour when Logan pitched reapplying Adamantium to his own claws back in ’17, far more for Erik’s sake than Charles’, but too his credit, this Charles reacts roughly as spectacularly as the Professor had, enhanced telepathy replaying every dramatic, blood freeing swipe Logan could ever remember making, and a few probably even he couldn’t. 

Which means an elegantly raised eyebrow sets a disharmonious note against that wan and stubbled face, eyes somehow shimmering, yet face strangely dry. Logan swallows hard. 

He knows that face. And this is not a romantic dramedy. Except that he does know it, better than he knows his own most times. 

Logan’s voice drops an octave or three, barely a whisper, loud enough to brush the air, but enough to touch the dust cascading around the study. “You send me back here Charles, you and Erik. You did that. The proof’s standing right in front of you.” He feels a tad dramatic, spreading his arms at that, but he resists the urge to twirl even a little, so he figures Charles can take what he can get here. 

Doesn’t stop Logan from pressing the advantage though. “I remember meeting you for the first time twenty odd years from now, in the Winter of 1999. I barely even remembered my own name on a good day, but I remember that. I remember all of it. That desk of your father’s, that ugly as fuck collection of vases from your Aunt Eve’s jumble-sale phase. That one we just broke was there as well by the way. Apparently even I can’t forget tulips quite that ugly.” The Professor had always hated magenta. 

Logan purposefully waits while Charles’ reddened neck swivels to regard the shards currently lying haplessly strewn across the carpet. That’s different at least. 

“I remember _you_. The sound of your voice in my head, the sound of that damn chair. Guess Hank still doesn’t believe in updating the important shit.” The blue eyes fall to the battered metal standing like a specter in the far corner, half hidden behind Brian Xavier’s massive oak desk. 

A cracked voice pierces the silence. “Logan…” He doesn’t let Charles finish whatever that sparkling whisper was going to produce. He doesn’t need to lose another one. Not here. Not now. 

Maybe if he repeats that enough he’ll even convince himself, Logan thinks ruefully. Not like anyone else is listening anyway. 

“I don’t remember much Bub, but one thing I know for certain, I never forget a scent. Even when I’ve forgotten everything else. And that day, two decades from now, in this room? That was the first time I’d ever smelled you before.”

The eyes that find him look rather confused. Logan fights the urge to swipe his claws across something, like those eyes perhaps. The Professor never let Logan see him look confused, not even when Hank died. Not even when the School burned. Not even when the world followed suit. 

“We met you, Erik and I. In ’62. Before C-Cuba. You were smoking a rather odious cigar but I would imagine that with Feral senses like yours, that wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference. You definitely smelled us.” Charles’ voice manages to run the gamut between shaky and confused to curious and knowledgeable in less time than the Professor’s ever had, but damn if Logan doesn’t suddenly feel a whole lot less like swiping and a whole lot more like hugging.

“Well you’ll have to excuse me for not remembering Bub, but Erik once compared my mind to a moldy block of Swiss cheese, and he sure as hell didn’t get that impression just from playing fucking chess, so whatever’s left in here is too messed up to ever be proof of anything.” Logan is trying really hard to suppress a wince at the shocked frown that mars Charles’ features at the mention of Erik. Apparently two decades of sharing and caring at the end of the world still wasn’t enough for him to understand what the heck it was that made this man angrier at his former lover than his abusive asshole of a step-father. 

Logan’s ears catch the feint sounds of Hank moving down the stairs before he had time to process whatever Charles’ facial expression is doing at that particular moment, so he’s halfway to the study door handle before he remembers that Charles is frighteningly, and frustratingly, human when it comes to having warning about inconvenient knocks at doors these days. 

“Logan, Kurt wasn’t abusive.” Apparently he’s just as stubborn as he ever was though. 

This time he does scoff, loudly. He leaves off the cursing though. “We both know that’s bullshit Bub, because I know for damn sure that Erik spent half a century wishing time travel existed just so he could murder Kurt Marko. And considering all the crap that guy went through, that’s pretty damn impressive.” Logan feels that sentence made far more sense in his head. 

Apparently Charles agrees, because his only response is to reach for the whole bottle of vodka. 

Logan is back at the desk without really trying to move, words spilling from his mouth as he yanks the clear liquid towards himself. 

“For the record, I’m the last person in the world that should be here right now, trying to give anyone a pep-talk. Let alone past you. Just ask future you.” Logan’s fingers brush Charles’ as he removes the bottle from unresisting fingers, wide blue eyes fixed on his face with more clarity than he’s entirely comfortable with. 

He inwardly scoffs at the irony. He doesn’t listen to the inner silence that follows. 

“But that being said, I knew you for fifty-seven odd years Chuck. And yes, Hank helped me count that, so I’d say it’s pretty accurate considering we were doing it in lieu of counting sheep. Kinda depressing when the future doesn’t have grass.” Logan feels his verbal diarrhea would be more alarming if he wasn’t more used to literally being unable to have a brain to mouth filter when conversing with the man in front of him. 

Somehow that seems like a great time to lean down over Charles, hands finding the man’s shoulders. He’s almost gratified when there isn’t so much as a flinch. And damn this version of the Prof is ripped. 

“In all that time, all those decades, you spent more time in my head than I did all told. And in fifty-seven years, you never once discounted a single thing that was done to me. Never thought it made me less a man, less of a person. Never thought it made me worthy of pity either.” Charles’ breath is hot on his neck, little puffs coming out desperately, lungs heaving in time with the blown depths of his rapidly blinking eyes. Hank’s footsteps are humanly audible now. 

Logan lets his voice finally achieve that growl quality he’s been trying to bury in the future where it belongs. “What exactly makes you think for one moment that I didn’t extend the same courtesy to you. The same respect for what you’d been through.” Hank’s hand finds the doorknob, which squeaks alarmingly as it turns ever so quickly. 

The door is actually open, Logan back across the length of the study, Charles slumping against the desk when he imparts his parting salvo into the air. “Maybe you should try it sometime.”

Logan is too fucking tired to bother elaborating. 

His head has never felt emptier. 

Logan has never heard the Professor so much as mention the name Kurt Marko, even in passing. 

He’s with Erik though. If this hadn’t been a one shot gig, Marko wouldn’t have stood a chance. 

He certainly never would have had a chance to teach the best man Logan’s ever known that he was worthless. 

Logan fucking hates time travel sometimes. 

00  
For a half-crippled drunk who’s at least a good head shorter than Logan, Charles packs quite a lot of hidden strength into his sinewy forearms. 

As evidenced by the rather alarmingly shuttering wall paneling that Logan’s just been slammed into. If he had the breath for it, Logan would probably be grateful for once for his non-Adamantium clad bones. 

Five decades, and he’s still concerned about the state of the Mansion’s paneling. Never let it be said the Professor didn’t leave a strong impression on people. Or maybe he’d been that polite and considerate of other people’s property already, all by himself. 

Logan doesn’t have the breath to doubt whether he truly cares. 

Charles kisses like a drowning man gulping in water, too close to death to realize it isn’t air. His fingers grip the lapels of Logan’s jacket stronger than a limpet. Although whether that’s from desperation or for balance, Logan can’t really tell. 

Then Charles pulls back for a moment, startlingly sober blue eyes finding his, seeking something. Permission probably, wondering why Logan hasn’t kissed back. 

Part of Logan wants to laugh at the sheer arrogance in his own irresistibleness this young pup still manages to exude. Part of him just wants to cry, because if he ever needed more proof that something of the Professor existed in this dope broiled, hairy version of himself, he couldn’t get more of it than what’s right in front of him, staring him in the face. 

Decency has always been one of the rarest commodities Logan has ever encountered. And one of the hottest. 

Then, something flickers across the edge of his mind. Just a moment, a brief candle flame guttering in a windless gale, a faint cricket chirping in a Sentinel swept wasteland. Erik had loved creating post-civilization metaphors. 

Logan could almost wonder if he imagined it, except he doesn’t have enough breath to wonder. 

_Charles kisses Logan for the first time in an abandoned corridor in the Mansion’s east wing, right across from his mother’s old room. Logan thinks it was sometime in the early summer of ’72._

All he ever really remembers it that Charles tasted like scotch. And tea. And something suspiciously like blueberries.  
00

The sex is rather stunningly amazing. The have a lot of it. Logan looses count rather fast. 

He never truly forgets a single moment of it though. 

Including the time, he said he didn’t want to go. 

He never remembers if he ever asked to stay. 

00

“Logan.” Logan feels his muscles freeze up at the familiar command in that voice, that voice that’s just slightly too young, too alcohol roughened, too charged to ever sound just right. 

It still takes everything he has not to turn around. Not to kneel down. Not to wrap his long arms around those thin shoulders and hold on like the world is drowning. Like he can’t breathe air anymore. Because damn if that wasn’t the Professor’s tone for him, right there, coming out of that bearded mouth. And damn if that wasn’t the most unfair thing he’s ever heard. 

Words spill out against his turned back, and suddenly he can breathe again, but that’s Charles talking. “He really cares about you. I could feel it. Every time he looked at you. He wanted you to know that.” Or maybe not. 

Logan feels himself scoff, allows himself a quarter turn, just enough to meet Charles’ guileless eyes. “No, he didn’t. The Professor had far more important things to be worrying about. And so do you.” Logan’s Professor would know it didn’t need saying, not now. Not ever. 

Charles’ voice is all his own again. It still freezes Logan to his metal less bones. “Maybe I thought it did.” 

The sound of metal wheels on a metal walkway apparently sounds the same no matter what decade the metal was produced in. So does the sound of those wheels pausing. A ginger curtain of hair falls over Charles’ shoulder in a wave as he regards Logan’s frozen frame from the doorway of Cerebro. For a moment, they consider each other. Then Charles turns back. Wheels away. 

_Are you coming Logan?_

After a moment of remembering how to breath again, Logan unsticks his feet. And follows the wheelchair out into the world beyond. 

00

Logan wasn’t in love with the Professor. Hard to fall in love with someone who was already in love with someone else the entire time he’d known them. Not that that had ever stopped Logan before. 

They certainly never kissed. Let alone had sex. 

He’s not sure why, but it took him less than five days to fall for Charles. It took him fifty years to remember that. 

00

There’s a scotch bottle sitting on the side table at the edge of the room. The one that Erik bought back before Cuba to replace Sharon’s old one that Alex never owned up to breaking. 

The Prof told him that story late at night on the plane once, barely a thin sheet between their sleep warmed skin and Erik’s warm arms. 

Logan feels the world shift beneath his feet, stronger than five minutes ago when he woke up in what seems to be as near to heaven as he ever didn’t expect to end up in, stronger even than it had in this very room, fifty odd years ago. 

Logan hadn’t wanted to go back, all those years ago. And maybe he didn’t.

Because he drank that scotch with the Prof after Jean died, watched Hank drink that whiskey bedside it after the Prof died that first time, because he lost his Prof a long time and all of a week ago, and Charles is right in front of him.

Because maybe he didn’t go anywhere at all. 

Logan stares at the familiar swath of gorgeous hairlessness facing him, every wrinkle and every crevice long memorized, this time from five odd decades he has good reason for not remembering a moment of. He has a feeling he knows where he can get help with that. 

He glances back at the doorway, cherry wood as dark and stained as it was in ’72, scratches standing out starkly where he knows they’ll be, just above the wheelchair bound head before him. He lets a slow smile cross his face, as warm and alive as it’s ever been. 

_Good Bye Professor_. It took him twenty years to find the courage to say that. He hopes somewhere out there, it got heard. 

“It’s good to see you Charles.” And he says it, because he knows it’s true. 

00

Logan didn’t choose in the end, whether to stay or go, whether to go back to the future, or stay in the past. 

The Professor or Charles. 

History didn’t decide either. It doesn’t play favourites, Logan’s always found, and he figures he has enough centuries to be more qualified to comment than most. 

History doesn’t play favourites, but the Professor did. Choose that is. And maybe it was the only choice, the only option. But it was still a choice. 

In a future than no longer exists anywhere but Logan’s memory, there existed a man he loved more deeply than anyone he’s ever met. That much will always be true. 

They never said I love you. That much will also always be true, no matter how much Logan wishes it wasn’t. 

But when the end of the world came, that man had one chance to choose someone to save. 

And he chose Logan. 

00

Logan kisses Charles for the first time on May 12, 2023. 

It tastes like Earl Grey Tea and blueberry scones. 

There isn’t a scotch bottle in sight.


End file.
